Crayons
by singingsin
Summary: Its the twins 36th birthday. set a couple years before the first movie. just a little thing ive been wanting to write for prompt #61. i rated it T just to be super cautious! enjoy and let me know what you think my preciouses!


"Happy birthday Conner."

"Happy birthday Murph."

January 21st. His and Murphy's 36th birthday...he feels old. Conner sighs internally. Honestly, he'd rather not do this every year, celebrate becoming another year older. He would've stopped acknowledging it a long time ago...if it weren't for Murphy. Murphy loves to celebrate. Seems to think getting older is an achievement of some sort. He's sure Murphy is aware of his feelings about it, but he usually chooses to ignore Conner when it comes to these things.

Personally Conner thinks that Murphy just enjoys another excuse to get totally wrecked before talking to their ma. God knows they love their mother, hardworking soul that she is. She did everything she could to make sure her boys grew up to be decent people, even if it meant relocating them halfway around the world by the time they were 12. But lord knows she could be a handful at times. Especially today.

Every year she calls them on this day, and every year it's pretty much the same thing. She gripes about them leaving their poor widowed mother to defend for herself, while they traipse along through Boston, having tea parties and knocking up all the girls. Needless to say, ma doesn't really know much about Boston. She didn't stay here long enough to do anything but work. Never explored, just went from home to work and back. She knows that they had something to do with a famous tea party. And she seems to think that all American girls are coy, sneaky whores, just waiting to get pregnant and suck the life force out of her two precious idiots. (There had been a lot of prostitutes in their neighbourhood growing up.)

Little does she know that most Bostonians prefer whiskey (themselves included) to tea and her two precious boys couldn't get a girl, whore or otherwise. Not that they didn't try, or that they didn't sometimes succeed in attracting the opposite sex, but most girls can't deal with the looks they share or the silent conversations that only they can understand. It frustrates them to no end. And really, how can you explain that relationship between him and Murphy, his twin? It's unexplainable. It just...is. Has always been. Will always be.

"Here ya go," Murphy says, breaking Conners train of thought. He tosses a small, brightly wrapped box across the kitchen, and Conner catches it deftly with one hand. He digs into his own pocket and pulls out a similarly wrapped box, a bit larger than his own, and tosses it to Murphy.

He knows what it is even before he opens it. Murphy does this every year. He rips off the bright paper, crumpling it up and tossing it on the floor. Murphy scowls at him, but doesn't say anything. Conner runs his fingertips over the box, a wry smile lighting up his face. Crayons. And...he opens the box, and chuckles. All the crayons have been switched out with black ones. No red or blue or yellow to be found, not in Conners box of crayons.

He smirks.

This is an ever amusing, long-running gag that the two of them share. Just something else that belongs to their private world, something else they don't care to share with others. It never gets old, never gets tiring, and is the one thing that keeps him celebrating this day with Murphy.

Every year, when they were young, they would get a mysterious package in the mail around this time of year. Too late to be a Christmas present, too early to an Easter gift. It would always come in a nondescript box, marked only with a stamp that read out 'BOSTON AIR MAIL' (This was one of the reasons they chose Boston over all the other places in the world when they finally did up and move. Their ma had her suspicions about the sender. And although she would never say it out loud, they both knew that she thought it might be their mysteriously vanished father. They never did find out though, and ma moved back home when the packages stopped coming. The boys were just out of high school and thought they'd stay for a bit and they'd been here ever since.)

All that was ever in those boxes, were packing peanuts, stacks of paper and a box of crayons. They loved it. Their world was a small one, cramped inside of a small, one bedroom apartment. It was all their mother could afford, and she scraped and saved for years before she could pay to fly them all out to America. No matter how badly she wanted to, she never had enough extra to buy them such things. Toys and frivolous things were best forgotten about, because they just couldn't afford it. So crayons, free crayons, were a god send for them. It gave them a whole new world to explore and create in.

They would colour for hours, after school and between meals. Murphy always drew colourful scenes, green grass and a yellow sun hanging in the sky, the biggest smile and a look of peace on his face. Conner loved Murphy the most when he looked like. So somewhere in his tiny, child's mind, he decided that he would never touch any of the coloured crayons. They were for his brother, so he could always be happy like that when they coloured. Conner would only use the one crayon Murphy never used. The black crayon.

And so Conner only drew pictures in black, for years and years. His suns weren't yellow, his grass wasn't green. And his pictures always worried his ma, but she just didn't understand. The colours were for Murphy! He was fine with his black crayon, really! And strangely enough he was. Somewhere along the line, he accepted that the world he created on paper was more interesting in just black and white. It was simpler. He liked that.

By the time they were in high school, they didn't really colour anymore, but the packages still came (somehow the sender knew when they had up and moved. The boxes still had a Boston stamp on it, but no more air mail stamp) and Murphy still always gave Conner the black crayon as soon as they cracked the box. More often than not, they would use the crayons for school projects, and they had plenty of small kids in their neighbourhood. Kids that reminded them of themselves, and whom they knew couldn't afford toys and frivolous things. Many boxes of crayons were given to the children of the neighbourhood, who would then run around and draw on the sides of buildings and fences. Most people didn't care, but he and Murphy had both scrubbed their fair share of crayon masterpieces off of walls, displeased parents scolding them the entire time. But it was worth it, to see the smiles on the kids faces.

When the crayons stopped coming in the mail, neither of them would admit it, but they were sad. Their mother took it as a sign, and moved back to Ireland, but they liked Boston, and decided to stay. She left them the money she had saved up for their return tickets, cuffed them and told them to behave and kissed them on the forehead and left. And they'd been here ever since.

That first year, alone, had been the hardest, and they had barely survived. Work was not easy to find. Americans were very particular about giving away their work to immigrants, no matter how many languages they spoke, or how qualifies they were for a job. They ended up doing a lot of manual labour, for dirt cheap wages. Enough to buy food, and they managed to find an old building that had been abandoned years ago. Technically it was squatting, but it was what they could afford, and no one around them seemed to care as long as they kept to themselves and didn't cause anyone any trouble. When their birthday came around, Murphy had just dragged him to the closest store, bought them a cheap box of crayons, and immediately picked out the black one for him.

For the last 18 years they had always gone out and got each other crayons. Sometimes it was in addition to something else, and sometimes it was just the crayons. Murphy always got the colours, and Conner always got the black one. They would draw one picture together, Conner and his black crayon creating the picture and Murphy and his colours filling it up. It was sort of appropriate too. Conner on his own was too serious, and Murphy too impetuous. Together they balanced each other out, lived and experienced through the other. Conner got to experience colours through Murphy and Murphy got to see the simplicity of black and white through Conner. Perfect harmony.

Murphy opens his present, ripping the wrapping paper and tossing it into a nearby garbage can with a meaningful look at his bother. Conner rolls his eyes. This year they both needed new lighters, their old ones finally dying. He digs around in the box, and Murphy does the same, two identical lighters sliding out when they upend the tiny crayon boxes. They grin at each other. Occasionally they even freak themselves out, doing things like this.

"Alright, get over here you moron," he says to Murphy and his brother crosses the room without hesitation. He pulls him into a hug, and he can feel Murphy's surprise as his twins arms wrap around him in return. Conner hardly ever does affectionate things like this openly, the much more reserved of the two of them. But today is special.

He just wants Murphy to really know how much he means, how much he loves his idiotic, excitable, innocent brother. And how much he still appreciates getting these stupid crayons every year without fail.

"You're a fucking idiot," he says with a smile, and he knows that Murphy will see the real words beneath them.

"Love you too Conner," he whispers into his ear. The phone rings, and they break apart, a knowing look on their faces. Ma.

"It's your turn to answer this year," Murphy says immediately and backs away as Conner throws a playful punch.

"It was my turn last year!" He whines, but he knows he'll do it anyways. Anything for Murphy. He sets down his box of crayons beside Murphy's on the table, and gets up to deal with his mother.

January 21st. His and Murphy's 36th birthday, and the two of them are still giving each other crayons.


End file.
